Hike acquires Creo, the makers of OS-centric Mark 1 smartphone

Indian messaging app Hike has announced that it has acquired Bengaluru based startup Creo. Last year, Creo had launched a smartphone and some media dongles.

Creo was founded in December 2013 by Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra, former Hike employees.

Creo had earlier launched Mark 1, a smartphone that ran on Fuel OS based on Android. Hike CEO Kavin Bharti Mittal was one of the investors in Creo.

The Mark 1 was launched for Rs. 19,999 and just three months later, the price was slashed by Rs. 6,000. In October last year, the company announced that it has stopped device production and will focus on its Fuel OS.

Hike did not reveal the financial details of this acquisition. The 50-member Creo team will start working on a developer platform to enable to third party developers to build services on Hike.

Coming to Hike, it was founded in December 2012 and has over 100 million users. In August last year, Hike had raised $175 million led by Foxconn and Tencent at a valuation of $1.4 billion. Foxconn, Tencent, SoftBank and Bharti are some of the investors in Hike.

Hike has over 300 employees and two offices. This is the third acquisition by Hike. Previously, the company had acquired Wi-Fi calling start-up Zip Phone in 2015 and live-streaming company Pulse. However, the company has still not confirmed the second acquisition.